


A Hurting Thing

by kinoface



Category: Arashi (Band), Japanese Actor RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Violence, Gen, Magic, Memory Related, Serial Killer Road Trip, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-22 20:15:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2520410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinoface/pseuds/kinoface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jun always knew he was destined for something great.</p><p>(For more specific information about the warning/tags, see the end notes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hurting Thing

**Author's Note:**

> I got really excited about Otherworlds this year but ultimately decided against participating for various reasons, including my busy schedule and inability to get anything accomplished in a timely manner, so instead I wanted to write a bunch of drabbles for all the worlds I would have requested. This fic began as a light-hearted amalgamation of several ideas, and somewhere along the line everything got all twisted and I ended up with the horrifying mess you see before you. I'm so sorry.
> 
> **Please heed the warning/tags. If any of them ping your NOPE radar and you want more information before deciding whether or not to read, check out the end notes for more specific (and thus spoilery) details.**
> 
> Thank you to unkinsei for volunteering to beta this monster and doing a seriously wonderful job. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Your help was invaluable. ♥
> 
> Title from ["I Saved the World Today" by The Eurythmics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmz-o68Gvnk). Definitely recommended listening.

The first time Jun kills a god, he feels powerful, unstoppable -- for as long as it takes him to reach the hallway. Then his stomach begins to churn. Keiko and Ayaka each take one of his arms, and together they guide him to the elevator, then out of the lobby and onto the sidewalk. As soon as they make it outside, he's breaking away from them and vomiting into the bushes.

"It's okay, Jun-kun," Ayaka says as she pats his back. "That's a perfectly normal response."

"There's a power surge when one of them dies," Keiko explains. "You've just absorbed some of it, so naturally your body is reeling."

Jun wipes his chin with the back of his hand. "Absorbed?"

Ayaka says, "It's a lot for a mortal to handle, but don't worry, you'll get used to it. The next one will be easier."

With a tug on his shoulder, Keiko helps him back onto his feet. "Aya-chan's right," she says. "But for now we have to keep moving."

The mid-August sun beats down on them from overhead. Jun is sweating, not just from the heat, but the sick coils of nausea are loosening as he drags his feet toward the car. They take their usual spots -- Keiko in the driver's seat, Ayaka riding shotgun, Jun stretching his gangly limbs across the back seat -- and head to the motel. This isn't a place where they want to be caught lingering.

*

Jun always knew he was destined for something great.

Even when he was young, he could sense that something set him apart from the other children his age. He was sick often and bullied incessantly, but he made it through with the knowledge that one day he would surpass even their most ambitious goals. He grew into a teenager who was responsible and intelligent but generally unremarkable; he graduated with average grades and a small handful of friends who quickly lost touch.

Still, he knew. He could feel it, every day, in the caress of the wind, the whisper of the trees, the heat of the sun, the pull of the ocean.

He carried this knowledge around with him his whole life. Even when he was nineteen and attending a mediocre university with a major in bookkeeping to make his parents happy, he still felt his fate simmering in his blood like gasoline waiting for a spark. So when two women approached him one day and told him that they'd been waiting a long time to find him, he knew what they said was true.

They spun a fantastical tale about an ancient battle between gods and humans. Many generations ago, the old gods gifted a few trusted humans with the ability to use magic, but when those humans began to teach their spells to others, the gods grew furious. They argued that the humans had dishonored them and grown selfish, thankless. They tried to revoke the humans' powers, and they almost succeeded, but the last remaining sect of mages found a way to lock the gods inside human bodies, complete with human lifespans. Under the effects of the enchantment, the gods were reborn into new bodies generation after generation, but after nearly a millennium, they've finally found a way to break the seal. Now they want to dispel the enchantment and take revenge on all of humanity for locking them away.

It was an unbelievable story -- but Jun knew it was true.

He knew even when the women told him he'd have to leave his friends and family behind.

He knew even when they pushed a sheathed dagger into his steady hands.

He knew even when they told him, _Cut yourself on this blade, let your blood be sacrifice and sanctification._

He knew. He has always known.

Jun asked, "Why me?"

They said, "Because you're not like everyone else," and nothing in his life had ever felt more real.

*

Killing the first god takes a lot out of him, more than he expected. Once they get him back to the motel he sleeps for two days, waking intermittently only to eat. "You need to regain your strength," Keiko insists, pulling him up so he's slumped against the headboard.

"Need sleep," he slurs.

"You can sleep afterwards." Ayaka passes something underneath his nose. "Look, we even got your favorite. Soba, see?"

He can't see. He can barely even open his eyes.

They feed him that first time, Ayaka carefully lifting the chopsticks to his mouth one bite at a time while Keiko paces in the background. He finishes half the bowl like that; the next time he wakes up, he finishes the second half mostly on his own; the next time after that, they have a whole meal spread out for him, miso and rice and a piece of grilled fish, and he eats it all in one sitting without any help.

The next time he wakes, early-morning sun is peeking through the heavy curtains. He sits up gingerly, feeling sore but fully awake, as if he ran a marathon but is ready to start another.

"Ah, you're up."

Keiko is curled up in a chair by the wall. She looks wide awake, with no book or newspaper anywhere in sight; she must have been watching over him. "How are you feeling?" she asks. She stands and crosses the room to touch the back of her hand against his forehead.

He lets her, and when she seems satisfied that he's not too warm, he scrubs a hand through his hair and down over his face. "Like I need a shower." He stretches his legs out in front of him, reaches for the ceiling, arches his back until he feels the satisfying pop-pop-pop all in a row down the length of his spine. Then his stomach rumbles. "And hungry."

He hasn't seen Keiko laugh this whole time, but she does smile. "Aya-chan is out getting us breakfast. Did you have any more dreams?"

He blinks up at her. "Dreams?"

"You don't remember? You kept having nightmares."

He doesn't remember, but he supposes that's for the best.

By the time he gets out of the shower, Ayaka has returned with miso, rice, and tea. The three of them gather crosslegged on the floor, where Jun eats as Keiko and Ayaka go over everything they've learned about the next god, including a general location. As soon as Jun's ready, they tell him, they want to take him with them to see if he can finish the job. That's been the deal from day one: they do the detective work, he completes the task.

"We should head out in a few days," Ayaka says. "That way Jun-kun has some more time to rest."

Keiko looks uncertain. "We do have a deadline, remember?"

They explained it to him in the beginning. The gods are born as mortals and then unlock their divine power one by one; there's not much they can do until all of them have been awakened, but once they have, they'll be unstoppable. It's Jun's job to make sure that never happens, and it's Keiko and Ayaka's job to assist and protect him in any way they can -- including, it seems, keeping him fed and watching over him while he recovers.

Jun is grateful for all they've done for him already, and for all that still lies ahead of them. He doesn't want to let them down now.

"He needs _rest_ , Kei-chan --"

"It's okay, Ayaka-san." Jun waves a hand dismissively, doing his best to project nonchalance. "I feel fine. I can do it."

Keiko turns to him, looking skeptical. "You're sure?"

He nods. "I'm positive. Like you said, we have a deadline. I know we can beat it."

When the last god has been awakened, it will be too late. Jun wil make sure they never reach that point. He'll show Keiko and Ayaka that they were right to pick him.

*

They pile into the car that evening, heading east, and Jun snoozes in the back seat and slips into a dream. He's still in the car, but something is different, and he quickly realizes that it's a memory of the other day, before the first god. They're parked in front of an apartment complex, and Keiko and Ayaka are twisted around in their seats to look at him with concerned eyes. Ayaka says, "Are you ready, Jun-kun? It's okay if you're not. We can wait a bit."

He can't hear himself speak, but he remembers what he said: _I'm ready, Ayaka-san._

"You've never faced one of them before," Keiko says. "Be prepared for anything. The god might try to confuse you or shapeshift. Maybe even into someone you recognize."

He says again, _I'm ready, Keiko-san._

Ayaka reaches out to touch his hand. "I wish we could go in there with you, but you know we can't."

"Our job is to protect you," Keiko says. She too reaches for him, touches her fingertips to his knee, the closest part of him she can reach. "But we can only go so far. Completing the task is something you have to do on your own."

He understands: it's his destiny. He takes both of their hands and squeezes them tight. _I'm ready._

Everything goes black, then fades back into color. He's in an apartment, empty but clearly lived in. He can visualize the dishes in the sink, the shoes of various sizes all lined up in the entryway. The room is silent and dark. He waits.

Black, then color. He was afraid the wrong person would walk through the door, but the figure standing in front of him is the god he was sent here to kill -- of that he is certain, knows it as sure as he knows his own heartbeat. He was afraid the god would appear to him as someone he loves, like Keiko said, perhaps his mother or his father, his sister, his friends, all the people back home who have no idea where he is right now. But the face in front of him isn't one he recognizes.

It's a boy. That's all. Barely older than Jun, by the looks of him, and he stands there motionless for long enough that Jun wonders if time has slowed to a crawl.

The boy -- the god -- says, "You're here to kill me."

Jun tightens his grip on the dagger in his hands. _Yes._

The god lifts one of his arms, and suddenly the doors and windows all burst open. Wind rushes into the room and swirls all around them, stronger than anything Jun's been caught in before. He sways in place but holds his ground. He is not frightened anymore.

The god says, "They told me you would come."

*

Jun wakes up with a jolt as the car pulls off the freeway. Ayaka is peering back at him from the front seat, smiling under raised eyebrows. "Hey, sleepyhead."

Keiko, as usual, gets right down to business. "We're in the area, but we need you to pinpoint the location for us."

Jun still feels half-asleep and starts a mumbled protest, but then there it is: a sensation buried underneath his pulse and his breath, pulling him in the direction of the next god. He says, "South of here."

From there, the silence is broken only by his occasional instruction, "Turn here" or "Keep going." Twenty minutes later they turn down a street lined with businesses and restaurants, and Jun says, "Here, it's up here. Just another block or so." Keiko slows the car until they find themselves in front of a modest flower shop. The window blinds are drawn shut, but the sign on the door is flipped around to say _OPEN_.

Just as they're pulling up, a man on a bicycle comes riding around the corner and slows to a stop in front of the building. He hops off his bike and unclips a keychain from one of his belt loops. He uses one of the keys to unlock a side gate, then leads his bike through, locks the gate again, and disappears down the narrow pathway.

"That's him," Jun says. He's certain.

Keiko is watching him through the rearview mirror, her eyes hard. "How do you feel?"

He doesn't feel tired anymore -- doesn't feel much of anything beyond the need to get inside that building. "I feel good," he says. "Strong."

"You are strong," Ayaka says, turning to look at him. "But this god is strong too. It might not be as easy as the last one was."

He nods once. "I'm ready."

They both stare at him for a long, silent moment. Then Keiko nods, mirroring him, and says, "Good," as Ayaka reaches back to hand him the sheathed dagger. He tucks it into the waistband of his jeans, under his shirt, to keep it hidden as he steps out of the car.

Once he makes it up to the door, he can see the paper taped to the inside of the window, handwritten characters spelling out _Back soon!_ below the _OPEN_ sign. Jun knocks, waits patiently, and knocks again after a few moments pass. Finally, footsteps sound from inside, and the door swings open to reveal the man on the bike. He's no longer wearing the uniform jacket he had on earlier, just slacks and a black sleeveless top; he's still a bit out of breath, but he smiles as he steps inside and snaps the handwritten note off the window. "Hello, hello, sorry, come in."

It feels like walking into a sauna when Jun steps inside. There's no air conditioning, and he can see the man's jacket and helmet discarded on the front desk. "Sorry," the man apologizes again, bowing politely. "Nori-chan went out to find someone who can fix the AC, so it's just me for now. I have to run things here _and_ make the deliveries, can you believe it? Anyway, I hope you weren't waiting for long."

"No, not long at all."

The man smiles again. He looks like he's about to say something else, perhaps ask what kind of flowers Jun would like, but instead he tilts his head to the side, studying Jun up and down. "I'm sorry if this is rude, but... do I know you?"

Uneasiness pools in Jun's gut, but he ignores it. "You must be thinking of someone else." He turns away from the man and reaches to close the door, lock it.

Behind him, the man starts to ask, "What are you --"

And then he sees the dagger.

Ayaka was right: this god puts up more of a fight than the first one did. He dashes away and makes it out the back door before Jun catches up with him and snatches him by his shirt, pulling him to a halt and accidentally pitching both of them to the side, where they land on the bicycles propped up against the wall. Jun grunts as one of the pedals digs into his ribs, shocking him for long enough that the god manages to scramble away. He staggers onto his feet, holding one hand to the sharp pain in his side, but the god reaches out to him, fingers outstretched, and suddenly grass starts to sprout up beneath Jun's feet. Before he can dart away, roots and vines shoot up as well and coil tight around his ankles, locking him in place.

The god must have twisted his ankle when they fell; he's limping now as he makes a run for the gate. Jun uses the dagger to cut through the vines, working quickly and hoping that the god won't have gotten away by the time he breaks free. Luckily, the gate is still closed, and the god is stretching to pull himself up along the length of it, trying to climb it even with his twisted ankle.

Jun tightens his grip on the dagger, gritting his teeth through the lingering pain in his side. "Forget your keys?"

The god turns to look at him with wild eyes. "I knew someone was coming," he says, "but I didn't think it would be you."

Jun raises the dagger. "Like I said. You must have been thinking of someone else."

The god reaches out again, but before Jun can get caught, he grabs the god by his shirt and drags him down the gate, pulling him back behind the building and out of view.

The god shouts and claws at him, summons roots to hold them in place, but it's too late. The blade goes in fast, slotting neatly between his ribs. He gives one heaving gasp as his fingers dig hard into Jun's skin. He struggles for a few moments after that. Then he goes still.

Jun lets the body drop. There are roots wrapped loosely around both of them. He bends down to cut them away as the blood spreads outward, staining his shoes, seeping into the gravel underneath.

He waits for the nausea to hit, but it never comes. Instead he feels numb, the way a limb feels when it's fallen asleep, like there's static crackling up and down the pathways of his veins. Numb and tingling, he makes his way back through the shop and out to the car, leaving bloody footprints in the mess of grass and dirt.

Keiko and Ayaka don't say anything as he gets into the back seat. The engine is already running, and they're pulling out into the street before he's even finished buckling his seatbelt. His hands are clumsy, operating purely on muscle memory. He's vaguely aware of Ayaka asking if he's all right, but when he tries to respond, tries to say _I don't know,_ the words come out slurred. He feels drunk, feels completely numb; even the tingling is gone now.

That's the last thing he remembers clearly before he begins to drift in and out of lucidity. One moment, he's in the car, groping for the door handle as they turn back onto the freeway. The next moment, their hands are on him, urging him out of the back seat. He sees people, familiar and unfamiliar: the family he left behind, the gods he killed, faces he can't recall. He sees the inside of a new motel, sees the bed they've put him in, sees the sun outside the window as it rises and sets, rises and sets. They try again and again to feed him, but he can't keep anything down.

He snaps to, like slamming into a wall after running at top speed. He's sitting up in bed, dripping sweat, his hand slippery in Ayaka's grip. He shakes, his throat burns as he retches, and all that comes out of him are glowing sparks that singe the bedspread.

He sobs, "What's happening to me?"

If either of them responds, he doesn't hear it. His blood is buzzing.

*

When he finally comes to and stays that way, the clock on the nightstand shows him that it's been four days. His entire body is sore and he feels utterly drained, but he's at least fully in control of each of his limbs. At first he thinks he might have simply dreamed up all the pain, all the things he saw, but the scattered black spots on the bedspread are sign that at least parts of it were real.

There's no one else in the room with him. He waits for a few minutes, regaining some energy, and then drags himself into the shower to wash away the accumulated sweat and grime. He scrubs until it hurts, and then he leans against the tile and lets the hot water soothe him, deciding not to run a bath for fear that he might fall asleep and drown in it. He stands there soaking for long enough that he expects Keiko and Ayaka to be back when he's done, but when he emerges from the bathroom, he's alone.

He begins to worry that they might have given up on him. He was out for twice as long as the last time; maybe they thought he'd never come out of it, that they had to go find someone else. The thought makes him feel nauseous all over again.

He spends an hour pacing back and forth and gulping down water from the tap to make himself feel a little less hungry -- thankfully, it stays down -- until finally, when he's started to wonder if he should investigate outside, he hears the car as it pulls into the parking lot and rumbles to a stop in the space in front of their room. The engine shuts off, the doors creak open, and he hears Keiko and Ayaka's familiar, comforting voices.

He goes to sit on the bed as he waits for them to come in. When they open the door, they both look relieved to see him up and clear-eyed.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Ayaka says, cracking a smile. She walks straight to him and presses her hand to his forehead. "Good, your temperature's gone down. How do you feel? Did you shower?"

He nods, but his eyes are on Keiko. She's standing across the room from him, leaning against the wall and watching him with her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

"You were out for a long time," she says. Her voice reveals nothing.

He nods again.

"Do you think you can do the next one?" she asks. "We can't afford to wait much longer."

His throat tightens at those words. He insists before she can continue, "I can do it. I feel better now, I swear."

"It's our job to protect you. If you're too weak --"

"Keiko-san," he pleads. He's been waiting nineteen years for this -- he can't lose it now. "Please, I can do it, I know I can. I promise I won't let you down."

She stares at him, her mouth drawn into a hard, straight line. Finally she says, "Good." Then she pushes off from the wall and strides wordlessly out of the room, snatching the keys on her way and closing the door gently behind her.

Beside him, Ayaka runs a soothing hand through his hair. "It'll be fine, Jun-kun." He shivers under her touch. "We believe in you."

*

Before long Keiko returns with food for him, and while he eats, she and Ayaka sit at the table on the other side of the room and discuss how to proceed. Jun is still weak, but now that he's at least conscious, they can turn their undivided attention to tracking down the next god on their list. After a full day of making phone calls and following leads, however, they're no closer than they were when they started.

What finally gets Jun back on his feet for good is the odd but insistent sensation that he should be somewhere else. It's something he can't ignore, like a voice in the back of his mind that starts as a whisper and steadily grows to a deafening shout, telling him exactly where to go to find the next god. When he tells Keiko and Ayaka about it, they seem pleased. "Your instincts are growing stronger," Keiko says. "Makes sense. After all, we don't have much time left."

He remembers: when the last god is awakened, it will be too late. He feels gratified and proud to have made them happy -- to have shown them that their faith in him is not misplaced.

The next evening, as the sun sets over the city, they file into the car and head out, Keiko driving while he directs from the back seat. It takes a while, but he leads them to a little neighborhood of small, close-together duplexes that look like they're mainly home to college students judging by all the twenty-somethings walking around with backpacks and stacks of books. Like the last time, he directs until they find themselves parked in front of a particular duplex. The front porch light is on, and they can see little flower boxes hanging from the windowsills. Keiko gives him a firm nod in the rearview mirror, and Ayaka wordlessly hands him the dagger.

With that first step out of the car and towards the duplex, he feels apprehension, sudden and nearly suffocating in its intensity. He didn't feel like this with either of the other gods, but now, as he walks up the stone path to the front door, he's beginning to feel less and less in control of his own limbs. By the time he steps onto the doormat, he's shaking so hard that even ringing the doorbell is difficult. When the door opens, he's begun to sweat. And when he sees the person standing in front of him, he has to fight to keep his knees from giving out.

"It's you," the god says, sounding strangely relieved. He reaches forward, grabbing Jun by the wrist and tugging him over the threshold. "Come in, hurry."

Jun lets himself be pulled inside. There's nothing else he can do. The god pushes him up out of the entryway without even giving him a chance to take off his shoes. The god locks the front door, saying as he goes, "We need to get you out of here. They're probably on their way right now." He steps around Jun, reaching out for something and muttering, "They already got to the others, we tried to warn them --" and then he notices the sheathed dagger gripped tight in Jun's unsteady hand.

"It's you," he says again, but this time the tone of his voice is entirely different.

Without warning, he strikes out and lands a punch straight to Jun's face. Jun stumbles backwards with a shout, dropping the dagger somewhere on the floor as pain spreads outward from the sharp, stinging agony of his nose. He can feel blood pour down his face, can taste it in the back of his throat, and his vision swims with tears. He drops to his knees and scrambles blindly for the dagger, but the god is on him in an instant, pushing him onto his back and holding him down, looming in his still-blurred vision.

Jun braces for more pain, but instead of hitting him, the god latches on to the collar of his shirt and yanks him up, half off the ground. "It's soon, isn't it?" he hisses. "Your birthday."

The question stuns Jun. It's been so long since he's even thought about it that he has to struggle to remember -- and how would this god even know something like that? Then he recalls Keiko and Ayaka telling him the gods might try to confuse him, and he shakes it off. More trickery.

The god keeps raging over him, undeterred. "Everything they've been telling you is a lie, don't you realize that? Don't you see that they've been using you?"

Anger flares up inside of Jun, along with something else he can't quite name. He wants to scream, _Shut up!_ , but he can't get enough control of his mouth to form the words.

The god just shakes him, keeps talking over him. "It's not true what they've said about us -- you don't have to do this --"

 _Yes,_ Jun thinks, furious. _I do._

With a wordless shout, he kicks the god away and sends him staggering back into a bookcase. He gets back on his feet and wipes at his eyes, then his nose, his sleeve coming away streaked with red. He spits blood onto the floor and picks up the dagger, unsheathes it and throws the scabbard off to the side.

Across from him, the god's fists are beginning to glow, orange and blinding like the sun in the August sky. "You don't have to do this," he says again. "Please. I don't want to hurt you."

"Shut up!" The pain in Jun's nose is radiating out to the rest of his body, making it difficult to think. He feels like he's shaking apart. "Shut _up._ "

He steps forward, and the god's fists flash white before he hurls a fireball in Jun's direction. Jun dodges it easily and realizes it was only meant as a warning shot.

"Stop," the god is pleading. "It's not too late. We can still turn this around -- the plan can still work --"

"I know all about your plan for revenge," Jun growls. "I won't let you go through with it."

The glow around the god's hands dims, then disappears entirely. His arms lower to his sides, and when Jun looks back up at his face, he sees what looks like genuine despair in his expression. "Revenge? Is that what they've been telling you?"

But Jun isn't listening, not anymore. He rushes forward, manages to get close enough to graze the god with the blade of his dagger before the god catches him by the wrists and holds him still. This close, Jun feels paralyzed. He can't pull back, can't look anywhere but the god's eyes as he squeezes Jun's wrists and whispers:

"Jun, please. You have to _remember_."

Jun's heart clenches in his chest -- and suddenly the lightbulbs all around the room pop and fizzle, then explode in a shower of sparks. The god gasps, looks away, and Jun uses that split-second of weakness to wrench his arms free and drive the dagger home.

It slides into the god's stomach effortlessly, with no resistance whatsoever. The god's fingers scrabble up Jun's arms, catch on his shoulders and curl in the fabric of his sleeves, tight as a vice. The god gasps wordlessly as blood splatters his lips, and in that last, awful moment, Jun can't look anywhere but his wide-open, terrified eyes.

The god's body goes limp, sinking into a heap at Jun's feet.

All in a rush, Jun feels the energy as it surges into and through his veins, until they feel as if they're about to burst. He chokes on it, drops the dagger, and the sound of it clattering onto the floor rings like a bell in his head. He stumbles towards the door, trips, falls to his knees. The last thing he sees before he collapses are the sparks that are sputtering from his fingertips.

*

Memories replay; the city flashes in and out of his vision. More than anything, he feels the pain. When he finally wakes up, everything looks and feels white-hot before he realizes he's lying in the car, that they're driving down a quiet freeway with the sun blazing ahead of them.

It takes a few tries, but he finally croaks out, "Where are we going?"

He can see Keiko glance up into the rearview, while Ayaka turns to look at him over her shoulder. "Coastal city northeast of here," she says. "The next god is there."

He starts to nod, but that just makes the pain in his head flare up. He lies still until it becomes bearable enough to speak again. "I feel awful."

"You've been out for a week," Keiko says.

 _A whole week?_ He tries to sit up, but his entire body protests. There are vague memories swimming through his mind, little flashes of Keiko and Ayaka waking him up to force food into him, interspersed with faces and events he's never seen. "This next god..."

"He's strong," Keiko says. "Stronger than the others by far."

"We want to let you heal," Ayaka says. "But we're running out of time."

Jun doesn't want to admit it, but he doesn't want to lie to them either. "I... I don't know if I can do it."

"You have to," Keiko says.

"One more and you'll be done," Ayaka says.

He lets those words sink in, lets them calm the frenetic energy buzzing in his fingertips. He remembers the words they said to him that first time: when the final god has been awakened, it will be too late. He swallows the lump in his throat and asks, "What about the last god -- the one who hasn't been awakened yet?"

"Don't worry about those things, Jun-kun. Just focus on regaining your strength."

"There's only one more task for you to complete."

"We'll take care of the rest."

The sun is still rising, low in the sky and shining through the windshield to blind him when he looks at the road ahead of them. He closes his eyes and remembers bits and pieces of a story he was once told -- or was it something he saw himself? There was an ancient war, a struggle for power that had fallen into the wrong hands... It feels like it could have been a lifetime ago. Buried underneath it all, he sees the faces of the gods he's killed: the beauty mark on the first one's chin; the splash of copper on the second one's shoulder; the wide, round eyes of the third as Jun slid the dagger in; and a kind face he doesn't recognize but can recall as if he's seen it a thousand times before.

Jun asks, "Why me?"

They tell him, "Because it can't be anyone else," and he wants so badly to believe.

He looks out the window at the passing scenery, and he wipes the sweat from his brow. He breathes in deep to quell the nausea and the voice whispering in the back of his mind, _It's not too late. It's not too late. Turn back. It's not too late._

He thinks he can smell the salt of the ocean. Through the boiling late-August heat, they drive on.

**Author's Note:**

> This information is here for readers who want to know more about the tags before deciding whether or not to read. For the ones that are really spoilery, highlight the purple bar to see the text.
> 
> Major Character Death: Yes, it's Arashi.
> 
> Serial Killer Road Trip: Pretty much what it says on the tin.
> 
> Blood and Violence: I thought about it and decided that there's not enough graphic detail to warrant a warning, but if you're particularly squeamish about blood and/or knives, proceed with caution.
> 
> Vomiting: There's not a ton of it and it's not described in graphic detail, but it does happen more than once throughout the fic.
> 
> Memory Related: "Memory Loss" and/or "Memory Alteration" are more accurate (and more spoilery). Specifically, Jun encounters people he's known in a past life/past lives but can't remember them or the events surrounding them. If any of that rubs you the wrong way, proceed with caution.
> 
> **I try to be careful but sometimes I forget things; if after reading you feel like there's something else I should have tagged for or something I should have tagged in a different way, please let me know. ♥**

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [tomorrow is still waiting for us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2587250) by [kinoface](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinoface/pseuds/kinoface)




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